


The Three People, One Dog, and One Non-Human Non-Robot Not-a-Girl You Meet in Heaven

by samalander



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Afterlife, Character Study, Dogs, Friendship, Gen, Meditation, Original Character(s), Other, Recreational Drug Use, Reunions, aw dip, unlikely friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28119969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: On the afterlife, and the people Jason Mendoza found there.
Relationships: Janet (The Good Place)/Jianyu Li | Jason Mendoza
Comments: 88
Kudos: 178
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Three People, One Dog, and One Non-Human Non-Robot Not-a-Girl You Meet in Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silverinerivers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverinerivers/gifts).



> Special thanks to Amanda, who lived in Jacksonville and knows what she did.
> 
> Happy Yuletide, silverinerivers! I loved the idea of Jason growing not just over the time we saw him, but in his time in the Actual Good Place. How did he get to be the guy who could hang out in the forest by the end? Who helped him get there? I hope you enjoy this slice of his afterlife!
> 
> With apologies to Willaim Shakespeare, who I willfully misquoted.

**1\. Janet**

Jason marries Janet. Janet marries Jason.

That's it, that's all it is. She is the Wendy's Frosty of not-people, the jagerbomb of partners, the absolute reason for Jason to be not-alive in that moment. And so he marries her.

And it's pretty dope. He always wanted to be married, to have a family and kids. But that was for the future, when his probation was up. But there's no future anymore, since he's dead. So he's going to have to make some adjustments.

They dance to NSync, they go to Mindy's for their honeymoon, and they get rebooted.

The next time Jason meets Janet, he doesn't even know they're married. He's not allowed to talk to her, cause he's not allowed to talk to anyone. But he's way more worried about being sent to the neverending Peter Paul and Mary concert that would be his personal hell than the pretty magic lady who brings him wings.

There are a lot of ups and downs; like he almost marries Tahani and he hits Janet with a speedboat and he does marry Tahani and he accidentally burns down the Stupid Nick's that they live in while trying to make popcorn.

It's not a perfect relationship.

But there's still a moment, every time Jason crawls into bed with Janet, when he thinks he is damn lucky. He's not the smartest man, not according to any of the tests the school psychiatrists gave him. And there was the one judge who said he needed someone to conserve him like Britney Spears. Which was weird, cause he never even liked museums, but Judges said some shit about him sometimes.

So no, Jason wasn't going to win any smartness dance-offs. But he had followed his heart into something - someone - amazing. The not-a-girl of his dreams.

And if he had to be dead to get to meet her, then maybe dying wasn't such a bad thing after all.

* * *

**2\. Fred Taylor the Dog**

Some thoughts occurred to Jason a lot. Multiple times, over multiple lifetimes of afterlives. Things like how it was racist that they said he was Taiwanese or that it was whack that no one in the Good Place wore neon, or that they really should get to see their pets who went to live on fancy farms again.

He waited a few Bearimys to say the last one to Janet, though.

She had made him dinner - atomic sauce on the wings, hot sauce on the ribs, and love sauce in his heart for her. And she watched him eat it like she always did.

Afterwards, the were playing pool and Jason finally decided to ask Janet for the one thing he was missing.

"I had a dog when I was a kid," he says.

"I know," Janet replies, which is something she does a lot and he likes that she always seems to know what he's talking about even when other people think he's weird. "Fred Taylor the Dog. You found him in the alley where you used to go to throw hot nickels at other children."

"Dodge nickel," Jason says, smiling. It was a good game. He won a lot. "Can Fred come and hang out with us in heaven?"

Janet takes a tiny moment to think, which is weird cause Janet never needs a tiny second to think about anything. "Yes," she says, finally, chucking the 5-ball over her shoulder, where it rebounds off the ATM and lands in a corner pocket. "Two million points."

"Dope," Jason says. "I'd like to see my dog please, Janet."

Her ping is the one she makes when she likes the request, the extra tone telling Jason that his wife is totally happy to do this thing for him. It's so much better than the angry ping she makes sometimes, like that time Eleanor wanted a shrimp that she could both ride and eat.

That had been a weird day.

But now Janet is holding Jason's dog, who is about two feet long and covered in brown fur, with prominent orange teeth and a teal collar that says FRED on it.

"Fred!" Jason is grinning so hard his cheeks already hurt. He reaches out to take his dog from Janet, who hands it over.

Fred bites him, and Jason laughs and sets him down. "I missed you too, buddy," he says, as his dog scurries away towards the tables.

Janet has her concerned face on, but she doesn't seem to know what the words she wants to use are as Jason grabs a wad of napkins to stop the bleeding. "Come meet Fred," he tells her, motioning her forward to the chair that his-- no, _their_ \-- dog is hiding under.

"Jason," Janet says calmly. She's always so calm. "You know Fred isn't a dog, right?"

Jason has never heard Janet tell a joke before, and it makes him really happy that she's trying at the same time as he gets to play with his best childhood friend.

"Of course he is," Jason says. "It's his name. Fred Taylor _the Dog_. He's a purebred Jacksonville Terrier."

Fred, for his part, hisses at both of them from the depths of the table-cave.

"No," Janet says. "Fred is a _Myocastor coypus_. A Nutria."

This joke is going over Jason's head. He turns to look at Janet and cocks his head to the side, trying to shake the thoughts into the places she's trying to put them. "Why would you eat my dog?" Jason asks, when the thoughts won't shake into place.

Janet smiles and Jason feels better that he can't make her words fit around his thoughts. Her smile always helps him.

"Fred," Janet says evenly, keeping eye contact with Jason, using her slow words so she's sure he hears all of them. "Is a swamp rat."

Oh. _Oh_.

"Yeah," Jason nods, grinning at her. "That's what I said. A Jacksonville Terrier. Pillboi had one, too. Her name was Tila Tequila's Bra."

Honestly, sometimes it's like the most intelligent not-a-robot, not-a-girl in the world doesn't know anything about the world. And she still looks confused, which is something Jason can understand, so he leans in and kisses her cheek.

Fred hisses at them again.

"You don't like him?" Jason asks, watching Janet's face.

"No," she says, and she seems to be thinking, which she has to do a lot when they talk about emotions. "I like him just fine. I like him as much as every other swamp rat I've ever met. Which is none. But also I don't really want to live with him."

That's fair, sure. Jason likes lots of people he doesn't want to live with, like Eleanor and Chidi. They're great people, but they have so many rules about not taking your pants off and not starting fires, it's exhausting just to meet them for dinner sometimes.

"How about," Jason says, taking Janet's hand. Her hand is nice. Her not-skin is smooth and her fingers fit between his just right. "You make him a little dog castle out behind the Nick's, and then I can go visit him when I want to hang out?"

Janet smiles at him and she blinks. Her happy ding fills the air and the hissing stops, replaced with the quiet of Jason's breathing and Janet's existing while he breathes.

"Thanks, babe," he says, kissing her on the cheek. "You're the best."

* * *

**3\. Tala Valencia**

The most nervous Jason ever remembers feeling is before Marsh Mash '07 when he had food poisoning from some bad alligator jerky but still had to nail a double flip in the dance team's "Umbrella" number.

He did it, but he ended up throwing up on two of three judges, which is kinda a party foul even in Florida. They got third.

But the day that Janet tells him his mom is through the system, that she's coming up in the next group, Jason feels like he might throw up on all three judges. It's worse than food poisoning, worse than what he remembers about the first time he died. He's gone through some shit, but waiting for her to show up is the most anxious Jason thinks he has ever felt.

"I want to meet her," he tells Tahani, who has been learning to make regional delicacies and is close to perfecting her lumpia. She's been bringing him batches for a few weeks now, and they're getting better and better. It reminds him of the ones Pillboi's mom used to make for them when they had sleepovers, and it feels like home when he bites into them. "But like it's been a long time. What if she doesn't recognize me? What if she doesn't like me?"

"She'll love you," Tahani says, meeting his eyes, and he understands how he could have loved her once. She has a warmth that radiates out from inside, a kind of love that makes him feel _seen_. "There's no way she wouldn't."

"You wanna come?" he asks, feeling like a little kid when he says it, like he's asking her to be his teddy bear. "Wanna come meet her when she gets here?"

"Jason!" Tahani grins at him and puts her hand over his. "I would love to! She was my mother in law, after all!"

Which is how Jason finds himself at the welcome party, his palms sweating and his stomach turning like a washing machine in a waterspout.

He knows his mom at a glance, from the pictures in his Lolo's den. She's beautiful, but he had always thought that. She has long hair with little butterflies in it, plastic ones that he remembers being obsessed with when he was a kid. He would stare at them and wait for them to take off, but they never did. He wonders, suddenly, what happened to those little plastic clips when she died, if his father or Lolo threw them away. He never saw them again, not that he can remember.

Still, Jason can't stop staring at his mom's face. Her face is still young, younger than his. She was younger when she died than he was.

He'd never thought that before.

But her face is beautiful, and it lights up when she sees him. "Iho," she says, and the next thing Jason knows he's hugging his mom for the first time in a thousand lifetimes.

"Hi, mom," he says, his throat feeling tight.

She breaks the hug first, moving back to take a look at him. "Oh my god. You got so big," she says, her smile so wide that Jason thinks her cheeks must hurt. She talks just like he remembers, like the girl from Clueless that he thought was really hot but it was weird she sounded like his mom.

"You got smaller," he says, returning the grin. Then he remembers that they're not alone and he turns and gestures to Tahani. "Mom, this is my friend Tahani."

"Hello, Mrs. Mendoza," Tahani says. She's almost as pretty as his mom, he thinks. She doesn't have the lines from smiling the way his mom does, and she doesn't move in the same way, like someone who's been out in a field and spun in so many circles that she threw up her cotton candy. He doesn't think Tahani has ever thrown up. Probably not even as a baby.

"As if! Not a Mrs anything," Jason's mom says, and she's so _nice_ that Jason's pretty sure Tahani doesn't even feel bad. "I never got married, Emilio Estevez wasn't returning my pages. It would be Ms. Valencia, but you are going to call me Tala," she says. "Also, you're gonna have to tell me where you got your shoes. They are _fly_."

Jason's mom doesn't even wait for a reply on the shoes before she tosses her arms around Tahani and pulls her into an embrace. Tahani squeaks out a protest, her arms flailing in an almost comical way for a second before she returns the hug.

"Now," Jason's mom says, releasing Tahani and turning to look back at her son. "I'm totally buggin', that test was so weird. They were all 'you have to think about what you do before you do it!' and I was like 'I know, right?' Anyway, whatever. Show me this afterlife. "

Jason laughs and offers his mom his arm. She takes it and they walk together with Tahani through the party and out into the air.

"Being dead is kinda dope," he tells her. "I live in a Stupid Nick's with my not-a-robot wife Janet. She's great."

"You got married! Snap, that's awesome!" she says, her face glowing again in a way that makes Jason feel so young he can barely stand it. She looks happy. Happy to see him. He wants to ask her so many things, like what she likes to do and what her favorite food is and if she wants to meet anyone famous and if she remembers where he put his Bop-it in 1992. But the words feel heavy in his mouth. For the first time that he can remember, he doesn't know how to ask the questions he wants to ask. How to _talk_.

"What do you like to do, Tala?" Tahani asks, because she never has heavy-mouth. She always knows how to talk to people when she meets them. Even when he wasn't allowed to talk to her and they were soulmates, she knew how to talk to him.

"Dance," his mom says, without skipping a breath. "Is there a place here to do that? Like, a club? Or, oh man, one of those MTV Spring Break houses?"

Jason actually jumps when she says it, like he's suddenly so happy he just has to hop into the air. "Mom, you like to dance? I have a dance crew! Do you want to join it? You can have a solo and everything! Avicii got here like a couple of Bearimys ago and he's gonna DJ and you should totally join!"

When his mom also starts jumping, Jason knows. He just knows that they're going to be good friends. He's gonna get to be friends with his mom.

"Yes!" she says. "Oh, that would be rad! Let's be a dance crew together!"

Jason is so excited he feels like he turned too many circles and he thinks he might throw up, and it's awesome. Tahani was right. His mom is a total eight, and they're going to have so much fun together.

* * *

**4\. Pillboi**

One of the weird things about the afterlife is that Jason doesn't really feel the need to do drugs anymore.

If he wants to feel high and dance to the music in his head, he can. If he wants to just mellow on the couch with a cheeseburger and a movie, he can. He doesn't need whippits or pot or a toad to lick, because it's heaven.

So when Pillboi shows up, after Jason's mom but before Donkey Doug, he and Jason are at a little bit of a loss for what to do. Not needing to find and consume substances cuts their activities in half. They can still dance together, and they do. They can still feel funny and hang out in the broken hot tub Janet got them, and they do that too. But it gets old.

"Oh, dip," Pillboi says on a day that might be the dot of an i. "You know what I just thought?"

"Nah, homie," Jason says, stretching out in the hot tub. "Was it that we could have asked for a working hot tub?"

Pillboi waves the idea away. "Why would we want that?" he asks. "I was thinking-- you know how time is like-- like how time passes after a snake bites you?"

He does know. Jason knows all about that, he once tried to get a coral snake high and it ended with a sweet hallucination and a hospital bill higher than he could count. But he does remember time going sideways at one point, so he knows what Pillboi is saying.

"Yeah," Jason says. "Time is kinda dope."

Pillboi high fives him and grins. "It is dope! But like, if the future is also the past here, do you think that maybe your hot wife could let us watch like, Jags games that they play on the moon in a hundred years?"

The idea is stunning. It's revolutionary. Football on the _moon_. Pillboi is a genius, and Jason is so lucky to have him as a friend.

"Hey, Janet?" Jason says to the air, and Janet shows up with her usual ding. Which, he should talk to her about dropping the bass in that thing. A walkout song for his wife would be rad.

"Hi," Janet says. "What's up?"

Pillboi doesn't even hit on her, which is kinda cool. He stopped doing that when he got to heaven, something about his test being about respecting people and not giving them drugs unless they ask.

"Hi Janet," Pillboi says. "You can see the future, right?"

"No," Janet says, and she's so sexy when she sounds like the Encarta disc Jason's fourth grade class had. "I experience all moments of time simultaneously. There is no future."

"Dope," Pillboi says. "Can we watch future football?"

Her smile and her nod are beautiful. Everything Janet does is beautiful. "Yes," she says. "I suppose you could."

Jason raises his hand and Pillboi gives him a high five. This is their best plan yet.

"Do the Jags ever win the Super Bowl?" Pillboi asks. "And can we watch them do it?"

"Yes," Janet says. "But I don't think you'll like it."

Well, that's just silly. Of course they'll like watching the Jags win the Super Bowl. There's nothing that could stop them from enjoying watching their team win.

"Why?" Pillboi says. "Is it soccer?"

Oh, dip. Jason hadn't considered that it could be soccer. That would be terrible.

"No," Janet says. "The Jags win in 2027, but their quarterback. Is--" she reaches out and takes Jason's hand. "Tom Brady."

Pillboi starts to cry. Jason gets it. He wants to cry, too. Tom Brady.

"I bet we win by a million points!" Jason says, reaching out to embrace Pillboi. Janet looks confused at the two men sobbing with joy in the broken hot tub, but she still manifests the TV and turns it on for them to watch their team in all of its glory.

* * *

**5\. The Honorable Judge Wyatt C. Chesterburke of the Fourth Judicial Circuit, Duvall County**

Jason brings Judge Chersterburke a coffee and a chocolate croissant every day for an entire Bearimy. Well, almost every day. Some days he gives the croissant to Fred Taylor the Dog, who is really into croissants right now.

"Thanks for trying to help me on Earth," Jason says, as they sit watching a cloud float across the horizon. "Sorry I didn't understand."

"It's all good," Judge Chesterburke says. He's younger here, and his hair is long and his eyes aren't as crinkly. "You wanna hit the skatepark later? I think Tony Hawk is giving free lessons to anyone who actually recognizes him."

"Yeah," Jason says. "Sounds fun."

Judge Chesterburke is maybe the coolest Judge ever, except for The Judge. Jason never thought he'd be friends with a 17-year-old skateboarding District Court Judge who once sentenced him to thirty days of thinking about what he'd done. But it was like that thing that guy said in that thing that time. _There are more things on Heaven and Earth than are found in your apology._

Jason was glad for that, really. He liked that his apologies didn't have to cover it all, cause he didn't think they ever could.

* * *

**0\. Jason Mendoza**

Jason has been alone for a long time.

And it's not just the alone that he is now, in the forest defending Janet's necklace from squirrels. He was alone a lot on Earth, too. Donkey Doug said it best at the party; he was 18 when Jason was born. He didn't know how to be a dad, and his partner in the game was 17, so it's not like she knew anything he didn't. And then she died, so they were on their own. Donkey Doug did his best. But Jason grew up alone.

Over the years he got pretty good at alone. He had friends, but part of him always felt like something was missing, like something was being held back from the kinds of connections other people made.

He didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it, on Earth. He didn't spend a lot of time thinking about anything back then. But now that he has time to think, he can see it pretty clearly. He was always looking to be a part of something. A dance crew. A chain gang. A football fandom. He was a piece in search of a puzzle. A buffalo in search of his wings.

And yeah, he has some good friends in the Good Place and the Bad Place and the Medium Place. He has friends in all the places. And he got to meet his mom, and be friends with his dad, and even see Pillboi happy. He got to fall in love. And that was good. Those were all parts of the puzzle. Some of them were closer than others, but all of them fit.

In his heart, at the bottom of it, Jason knows that the person he has to learn to love and cherish and be okay with is the person he knows least of all.

Himself.

Which is why the forest is kinda dope. There are trees and shit, sure, but more than that it's quiet. And it's a kind of quiet he doesn't think he's ever experienced before. An inside quiet. All the parts of the forest drop their bass at the same time as his soul does.

The synchronization, like he and the trees are all part of the same dance crew, gives him space to think and move in ways he never had to before.

He isn't unhappy. He wouldn't be ready to walk through the door if he was unhappy. He's content and he's happy and he's even copacetic. But if he's honest, he's still a puzzle piece. He knows what he locks with, but the time has come to step back, and to look at the picture they made.

Janet's necklace is heavy in his pocket, a weight that holds him to the ground. He wraps his fingers around it, smiling to himself. There's a lot there, a lot of things he connected to in Janet. She was so old and so new at the same time, kinda like he was. He hopes she'll be happy when she gets to marry whoever she falls for next. He hopes she falls for someone. Being in love was something she liked to do, so he hopes she keeps it up.

And he knows she'll find someone to be in love with. Because the universe is so big. It's so big and full and beautiful. It's a little like this forest; sure there are thieving magic squirrels and some shifty looking berries. But there are also trees and sky and lakes and peace.

There are the others who went through hell with him, Eleanor and Chidi and Tahani. He loves them, too. They made a picture of a little family, one that got all scrambled together like marbles in a jar, but they worked. They understand him in a way he doesn't think anyone else ever could. They listened to him, even when what he said was silly, and even Chidi did his best to try and get it. He really loves Chidi, who was the brain to Jason's gut. And Eleanor was the heart, and Tahani was the hands. They made up a whole person together, and they taught each other how to moderate.

The picture looks a lot like love. Like people who drive each other insane but love each other in the only ways they know how, broken and bruised and out of tune, but still trying to work together to make it better.

To make each other better.

Jason settles down on the roots of an oak tree and crosses his legs. He can hear the door from here, the way it calls him a little. So he knows he'll hear Janet when she comes next. He knows that when the big, scary universe brings back a part of his puzzle, he'll be here to see it.

She will come back. If there's one thing Jason knows about the puzzle piece that's been nestled next to him for the past billion Bearimies, it's that she'll come back for him.

'Cause she loves him. And gosh dangit, he loves her right back.


End file.
